So I read it, and it seems like his point is buried somewhere in there.
I get that he thinks like industry and academics in computing shouldn't mix, because they have very different time horizons and goals.
But what's the strength of the academic enterprise aka the title? The only part I saw in the entire essay was:
The explanation is that, with all its aloofness, the
university has an essential role to play, viz. to explain
to the world the foolishness of its ways.
Yeah, that wasn't a very strong defense. Critiquing current practices is one thing some parts of academia should do, but it'd be sad if that were 100% of what it were doing. The strength of the academic enterprise imo is doing hard-to-monetize basic research: developing the ideas and techniques that after several more iterations will produce or enable interesting things. I tend to think of tech-heavy startups as essentially mining ideas and results that are promising but have never been made practical; academia's job is to keep restocking that mine.
Critiquing current practices is one thing some parts of academia should do, but it'd be sad if that were 100% of what it were doing.
Precisely. And Dijkstra seems to take great offense at the critiques traveling in the opposing direction. To wit:
Did the writer not know that the use of the term "the real world" is usually interpreted as a symptom of rabid anti-intellectualism, or did he not mind?
As a PhD candidate in political science, a good 90% of my colleagues could use a daily injunction to think more about the problems of "the real world," rather than the abstractions of Deleuze and Guattari.
I don't have time to write a synthesis so I'll just copy & paste excerpts that should answer your question.
The university is at the other end of the spectrum: it is the professor's task to bring the relevant insights and abilities into the public domain by explicit formulation. (...) openness and honesty are characteristics that touch the heart of the academic enterprise: a university that hides or cheats can close its doors.
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The University with its intellectual life on campus is undoubtedly a creation of the restless mind, but it is more than its creation: it is also its refuge. (...) on campus, being brilliant is socially acceptable.
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If academic research is often astonishingly successful, it always is because the researchers had the wisdom and the opportunity to avoid both the trivial and the impossible, and to follow the very narrow path in between. It is that narrow path in between that defines the intellectual autonomy of successful scientific research. The major strength of the academic enterprise is that in a very technical sense scientific progress is unique in a way that neither political nor commercial interests can change.
finance doesn't magically confer certain properties on humans. human seek to satisfy their wants with limited means. does the pursuit of money lead to evils? sure, but money is only a stand in for other wants. money is a good because it is transparent in a way that other methods of accounting for the distribution of goods isn't. if you can quantify the resources that go towards X instead of Y and yet society claims to value Y above X you have some very useful data to investigate. contrast this with the primary competition for money as a means of distribution: opaque and non-fungible social favor. when a system of social favor redirects resources in a way inconsistent with values it isn't a simple matter of pointing to quantifiable numbers.
No, I believe that if an academic can't convince a layperson that what he or she does it worthwhile, they have no business asking them to work harder for longer for less to pay for it.
When did you last see a professor working for free?
Even though the chosen current title is at a first read catchy it really does injustice to the article. I would suggest you to put the superficially boring titile of the original:
I certainly agree with you, though the truth seems to be that the so-called "academic enterprise" seems to be succumbing to the pressures of industry. My university's CS department has begun offering grad-level courses in silly things like "Personal Software Process" and "Topics in Software Management" which, from first impressions of the students, are filled with utter BS.
BS courses in Computer Science -- this is nothing new.
Also keep in mind that such courses do address serious issues, and sometimes such courses aren't BS.
The last thing to keep in mind, is that sometimes a person will encounter information which is vital to them, but they won't have the expertise to recognize it as such.
Keep this in mind if you ever find yourself trying to explain why automated tests or source control is important to pointy-haired bosses with glazed-over eyes. Even in 2011, this happens in the real world all the time.
That said, the stuff that's really important in a course like "Topics in Software Management" isn't likely to be taught well by a college professor. Few college professors have to succeed in their jobs by managing a group to produce good software, and if they used to do that stuff, the environment they worked in might bear very little resemblance to the place you'll work. Learn that stuff from people you admire who produce awesome results.
He describes a situation arising due to the conflict that we need more and more 3rd level education for work skills, simply due to the more and more demanding problems, but currently the only, at least partially, working 3rd level education systems are the universities.
Lacking other options, universities must (and do) provide business-skill-education, whether or not one likes it.
The ideal ratio between "academic endeavors" and "skill-teaching endeavors" is not known, and we will probably go many wrong ways before we find something that actually satisfies the participants, if ever.
However, a very fine piece of text, as, plus or minus some points, it reminds us of different goals of different institutions, and the complex interdependence of our culture between all those different parts.
He seems surprisingly dismissive of the "real world."
Academic computing science is doing fine, thank you, and unless I am totally mistaken, it will have a profound influence. I am not referring to the changes that result from computers in their capacity of tools. Okay, the equipment opens new opportunities for the entertainment industry, but who cares about that anyhow. The equipment has enabled the airline industry to make its rates so complicated and volatile that you need an expert to buy a ticket, and for this discouragement of air travel we can be grateful, but the true impact comes from the equipment in its capacity of intellectual challenge.
Almost every paragraph made me think of Stephenson's Anathem, especially:
> The original Oxford Colleges were buildings fortified in order to protect the students against the rabble, and if you think that that is old hat, I refer you to the DDR or the People's Republic of China of only 25 years ago. It is a miracle whenever, these days, the academic world is tolerated at all; personally I am convinced that what tolerance there is would completely disappear, were the academic world to become secretive.
I know EDW is a legend in CS, but that doesn't make everything he wrote insightful. If you thought this was a long-winded, hard-to-read, pointless rant, let me assure all his essays in his later years(i.e. since he took up residence at UT Austin) are not worth your time. Perhaps some earlier stuff might have more value.
Serial found of consultancy firms - and one bought by TI. And then wikip says,
"According to Computerworld’s 25th anniversary issue, he was ranked fourth among the 25 individuals who have most influenced the world of computer science."
But I'm outside of the inside-joke: why he gets no love from Edsger W. Dijkstra in the OP.
EDW believed that the real "computer science" is not "selling snake oil," like Object Oriented Design Methods, which he considered a kind of selling "business management" in software. He believed that the real "computer science" is only in developing mathematical methods that enable fundamentally new possibilities by using them. James Martin personifies a "snake oil seller" for him.
By the way the Wikipedia entry for James Martin sounds to me a lot like it was written by James Martin himself. Reading the entry it appears that JM invented all by himself "Information Engineering," "Computer-Aided Software Engineering," and "Rapid Application Development."
All three concepts would anyway be despised by EDW who here implies that academics should work only with Buxton Index of 50.
"The strength of the academic enterprise imo is doing hard-to-monetize basic research: developing the ideas and techniques that after several more iterations will produce or enable interesting things. I tend to think of tech-heavy startups as essentially mining ideas and results that are promising but have never been made practical; academia's job is to keep restocking that mine."
and this:
"The explanation is that, with all its aloofness, the
university has an essential role to play, viz. to explain
to the world the foolishness of its ways."
Are the purpose of academia, then that's fine for academics in the sciences and math. However, that still gives little justification for academics specializing somewhere deep in liberal arts.
I get that he thinks like industry and academics in computing shouldn't mix, because they have very different time horizons and goals.
But what's the strength of the academic enterprise aka the title? The only part I saw in the entire essay was:
That's it? Am I missing something?